Rather than take you day by day, I’m going to split Lake Tahoe into two posts; one for the time we spent on/near the water and one for the time we spent hiking. This one is about the water.

On the first day of the Tahoe leg, the lake was extremely smoky and foggy – from the fires and bad luck, respectively. The visibility was so bad that the water looked grey and you couldn’t see the other side of the lake. But by our final day the lake had cleared up and we got to see it in all its glory.

We spent time on two different beaches, mostly napping or floating around in the water on the inner tubes provided by the folks who ran the place we were staying at. The water is very clear, cool and shallow for quite a ways out.

On our second full day, we rented a two-person kayak and did a 7-mile loop (whew!) that took us through Emerald Bay. The water there is a deep turquoise when the sun hits it right. The sky hadn’t fully cleared up by the time we paddled through it, but we got some hints of what it looks like on a good day.